Friday, April 18, 2014

The long-dormant site on First Avenue adjacent to your favorite Rite Aid on East Fifth Street is back from the dead… After years of stops and starts and various renderings, plans are now in place for an 8-story development that will look something like…

Permits indicate the development will span 34,055 square feet, with the bulk of the project dedicated to residential use. 8,456 square feet will be given to ground-floor retail, while the remaining 25,599 square feet will be divided between 27 units. 75 First Avenue will stand 80 feet in total.

NYY points out that the site's developer is Orange Management, and the project's designers are HTO Architects and NO Architecture, who provide this eye-rolly description on their website:

The facade responds to the contradictory fire codes for the building envelope. The east façade can freely open up, maximizing natural daylight. The glass on the north facade is a gradient of glazing apertures, each floor changing the percentage of opening from low to high corresponding to more sought-after views above and more stringent fire ratings below. The roof HVAC bulkheads are clad in a metal lattice framework for a vertical garden, adding desirable lushness and evaporative cooling to the roof deck.

Plans here have evolved through the years with various developers and architects. A rendering from 2007 showed a 14-floor development looking something like... (pre the the 2008 rezoning) ...

I'd hate to benl icing in one of those apartments with windows facing north when RiteAid sells the air rights and an even taller building goes up right next door. There goes your view, and all the natural light. But I guess that's why they invented the light bulb.

It looks like a nursing home with a Rite-Aid instead of an admitting area. And as blue glass noted, it seems like a substantial number of the senior residents are having trouble figuring out how to properly use their toaster ovens.

As Giovanni points out, I too find it strange that the design of this building is all about the windows facing north. The owner(s) of Rite Aid will someday sell a very valuable piece of east village land to the highest bidder and what then for this proposed building? On the other hand we can at least be glad there is not more than 8 stories planned or something to match the elderly housing directly across the avenue.

My first thought was also about the doomed north-facing windows. The cynic in me says this will never get built - developers are just waiting for the Rite Aide lot to open up so they can take the entire corner.

A visit to archives

Text and photos by Stacie Joy When I meet up with David Prettyman and Jazz P. Souisay, the co-owners of Bali Kitchen , it’s late on a we...

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